A New Handbook on Silicon Based MEMS

Handbook of Silicon Based MEMS Materials and Technologies was published in April 2010. Altogether 73 leading experts from 12 countries participated to the writing process and the result was nearly 700 pages about materials, modeling, measuring, processes and packaging within silicon based MEMS.

The book project started four years ago when I received a phone call from Professor Veikko Lindroos, Aalto University School of Science and Technology. Veikko Lindroos had been contacted by Nigel Hollingworth from William Andrew Publishing, who proposed writing of a new handbook on MEMS. Professor Lindroos presented the idea to me and we considered thoroughly, if another handbook on MEMS was necessary. And if it was, what would be the focus as the content should differ from other good books on the market. It took a couple of months for us to think and the answer was definitely yes. Handbook of Silicon Based MEMS Materials and Technologies was about to be born.

In our point of view a new book was needed, because the structure of the MEMS industry is facing changes and there was demand for updated information. Consumer electronics is becoming the new technology driver in MEMS business as the usage of MEMS is emerging especially in mobile communication and gaming devices. Companies focusing on consumer electronics will grow and foundry business will finally make its breakthrough. As a consequence of all this a lot of new engineers with only a little background in the field of silicon based MEMS will enter the business.

The target group that is process engineers, designers and researchers in the growing industry set requirements on the content and volume of the book. The book had to be compact enough, but still cover most important areas of silicon based MEMS. The level was planned to be introductory, the idea was that references would guide the interested reader deeper into the selected subject.

With these hypotheses we started to plan the content. It was apparent that the two of us had to strengthen the editorial force. Ari Lehto, professor of MEMS also from Aalto University School of Science and Technology and Professor Teruaki Motooka from Kyushu University were recruited to the group of editors. We thought four editors were enough to cover the different aspects of the forthcoming book.

We came out with 42 chapters divided into 5 parts. We decided to share the responsibility so that each part of the book had its own editor-in-chief who knows the area in question best: 1. Silicon as MEMS Material (I acted as editor in this part), 2. Modeling in MEMS (Professor Motooka and Professor Risto Nieminen, Aalto University), 3. Measuring MEMS (Doctor Veli-Matti Airaksinen, director of Micronova at Aalto University), 4. Micromachining Technologies in MEMS (Professor Helmut Seidel, University of Saarland), and 5. Encapsulation of MEMS Components (Professor Ari Lehto and Heikki Kuisma from VTI Technologies).

We made a list of leading author candidates who were supposed to carry out the actual writing. Virtually all candidates accepted our proposal. We decided to include also new topics from the field of MEMS. As examples I could mention chapters on porous silicon, TSV´s and ALD-technology (we believe that ALD has a good potential in MEMS). Some emerging technologies were deliberately left out.

When the book was almost finished, Elsevier acquired William Andrew Publishing and Helsinki University of Technology merged with two other universities forming Aalto University. From editor´s point of view, these transitions went smoothly and all manuscripts were submitted to the publisher between the end of 2008 and the beginning of 2009.

The book came out early this year. In my opinion, targets set in late 2006 were well achieved with 668 pages including prefaces. Contents should be attractive not only for new entrants in this business but also for more seasoned specialists in the art of MEMS.